Wednesday, 11 September 2019

Welcome back! I hope you got your score guesses in because it is time to dive into the first case. Just as in the previous game, we have three cases to choose from; while we can play them in any order, I’m going to take them sequentially as I expect the authors intended. While I have nothing to show for it yet, I have reached out to some of the team responsible for this game to answer some lingering questions that I have, and possibly even to get an interview. We’ll be playing for roughly seven more weeks and I’d like to try to see what we can learn before the end. We shall see!

The first case is “The Two Lions”. The original tabletop game featured this as the third case, called “The Lionized Lions”, but beyond the similar title I have not looked to see if there are any differences as I am avoiding spoilers. Unlike many of the previous cases, there is only a cursory introductory movie: just a single still image of a note on our door, telling us that something will interest us in the day’s Times. Who put the note on our door? What might we find to be of interest? How will we get paid for a case of “ding dong dash”? I guess that is what we need to discover.

Saturday, 31 August 2019

The blurb on the back of the box tells us, "What they said about Sherlock I, you'll say about Sherlock II." I am fairly certain that there have never been truer words in advertising because that is exactly how I feel opening up Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective Vol. II. It’s cliche to say that everything old is new again, but it seems especially true in this case as we are introduced to three new cases for Mr. Holmes and his trusty companions to solve, all taken from the original tabletop game.

In the history of video games, this seems fairly rare. Most sequels-- but certainly not all-- adjust something in the follow ups. The Ultima games were famous for never re-using an engine in their main numbered games. In the adventure space, Sierra and LucasArts reused their engines, but rarely had sequels that used exactly the same engine. Even when they did, they made significant changes in the gameplay. (I’m tempted to say that King’s Quest II may be an exception.) The early Wizardry sequels were more like expansion packs than new games and maybe that is the right way to think about this one. It is “Volume II” rather than “II”, after all. Is that such a bad thing? We’ll just have to see.

Monday, 26 August 2019

Sometimes we beat games, sometimes games beat us. Inca definitely did that for me. At first it forced me to lose my dignity and rely on cheat codes to get even started. Then, after this irreparable error of dishonest gaming, I didn’t even manage to get to the end of it.

Look at it gloat!

I could undoubtedly use my reviewer powers and punish Inca with bad scores, but I want to leave all enmity behind and give a fair rating.

Sunday, 25 August 2019

Quinn’s Journal #2: "I've managed to escape with Chmeee's son in the prototype ship, but now the Puppeteers want us to go retrieve some ancient technology in stasis boxes on Ringworld. How are we ever going to catch up with the Destroyer? These boxes are not exactly easy to get to, either. Seeker is confident as always, but he's taking the worst of the danger during these retrieval missions."

Thursday, 15 August 2019

Quinn’s Journal #1:"What a strange business this is. First, my old friend Louis Wu disappeared, and managed to see it coming soon enough to alert me, and then I found that his contact Chmeee had also disappeared under unusual circumstances. I had very little time to wonder about this, though, because as soon as I made contact with Chmeee's son, we were attacked and had to make a run for it."

Monday, 12 August 2019

What were my expectations when I started playing this? Well, maybe more safes... Honestly, my familiarity with the game only goes as far as remembering to have seen some screenshots in a magazine some time in 1992. I guess it was a review, but I can’t recall what the reviewer thought about it. The reason I remembered it is probably due to the colorful and cartoony graphics, that must’ve struck a note with me at the time.

Since then I’ve not heard anything about it, with adventure game classics like the Sierra Quest-series or anything made by LucasArts claiming all the spotlight, so I wasn’t sure if it wasn’t actually an adventure game, or if it just wasn’t very good. It certainly didn’t propel the creators Dynabyte to stardom. They made only two more games, one of them, Big Red Adventure seems to be a sequel to Nippon. I’d never even heard of that game before I researched this, but that could be me.

Famous or not, the game has both entertained me and frustrated me, so as I ponder how to go about evaluating it against the mighty PISSED, I’m still not sure how it will all play out in the end. But let’s start with the first category, and see how it goes

Friday, 9 August 2019

I wonder how a Shoot’Em’Up Addict could retain the interest of readers through couple of posts? “And then another orc came running from the left. And I shot it! Another one followed it. I shot that one, too! And yet another, blast, good riddance to orc number 45! I was almost ready to move to the next level, when I left my guard down and a stray bullet hit me. I tried loading, but then I remembered I had forgotten the whole saving business. Next thing you know, I had changed into my skeet gear and imagined I was shooting the game disks into small pieces.”

Wednesday, 7 August 2019

The last game I played through for the blog was Dune (let’s pretend Rome never happened), which was more or less based on the famous science fiction novel, and before that was Gateway. Up next, I have the opportunity to present another game based on a famous science fiction novel: Ringworld, by Larry Niven. I’m seeing a theme here.

Friday, 2 August 2019

There comes a time in everyone’s life where they need to put away their toys and provide a numerical rating for a tie-in adventure game written in 1992. More than once, in my case. But before we get into the all-important rating, let’s recap:

Batman Returns is the final game by Bill Kunkel’s Subway Software. Unlike the majority of the games that we play, we have Mr. Kunkel’s own words on the development process in a series of editorials as the “Game Doctor”. We can appreciate his joy at being able to work with the Batman mythos followed by his horror as he realized he was not making the game that he dreamed of. Instead of producing a Batman game that he could be proud of, he had to shoehorn in an adventure game on top of a movie that he did not like, with studio interference telling him what he could and could not include, with a development house that seemed ill-equipped to build the game that he designed. It is perhaps no wonder that this was his final game with Subway, although that may have been as much due to his changing fortunes in the magazine world as frustration with the game design one. Reading his words, I could not help but to root for the game to be better than its reputation. It also saddens me to no end that Mr. Kunkel is no longer with us; he feels approachable and would have been an amazing person to interview. I failed to mention it earlier, but we have also lost Joyce Katz (née Worley), the third member of the Kunkel/Katz/Worley trifecta. Of the three original developers and business partners, only Arnie Katz appears to still be with us, but I have been unable to locate him in time for this post.

Rather than dwell on that, let’s consider what we have: the first ever Batman adventure game and the first game to focus on his abilities as a detective. We successfully pieced the clues together to locate Penguin’s lair and prevent him from becoming mayor of Gotham. We stopped an army of marching penguins with rocket launchers. While we failed to bring Catwoman into the light, I’m going to imagine that there’s a world in the DC multiverse where Burton’s Batman and Catwoman managed to eventually get together and find a good therapist. They both could use one. Batman drove off into a snowy sunset and we can at least be thankful that no one thought to create a game based on Batman Forever.

Wednesday, 31 July 2019

I ended the previous post on a slightly slow-moving note, if I can call it that. For the umpteenth time, I needed to find 100 yen for a metro ticket. While I didn’t flag that post as a request for assistance, I nevertheless found myself unable to obtain the necessary funds for the duration of my next play session. So I went ahead and sneakily requested some hints in the comments section, and luckily, Vetinari yet again came to my aid. I’m not sure what to think about the solution to the problem, but at least it again confirms my theory that the game interface is doing its utmost to fool me at every opportunity

Consider the following screenshot

Looks like we’ve got ourselves a Mexican standoff. Only I don’t see any Mexicans

Thursday, 25 July 2019

He is the terror that flaps in the night. He is the baloney sandwich that sits too long in the office refrigerator of crime. He is… someone else entirely. But where were we? Oh, right: Batman Returns, a completely different type of night-flapping terror. Last time around, I lost the game. I was supposed to find a blackmail tape that Penguin planned to use to throw the public against our current mayor, but I failed and Penguin broadcasted it to the city. He won the special election and Batman was humiliated. Even worse than that, I was back at square one to work out what I missed that led me down this dark path. For this post, I plan to play the whole game over again to see what I missed. If I could not find the solution, I would either leave the game as a “Lost!” or do a Request for Assistance.

At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I found the missing item quickly in my second playthrough. What follows is a second pass through the whole game, highlighting the things I missed the first time before continuing onward to the end. If you need a refresher on what I already found, you can always check out the previous post. I intended to present this over two weeks, but real-life challenges meant a delay in getting the first part out. Please accept this double-sized post as an apology.

Tuesday, 23 July 2019

After tackling the problems of Doug Nuts (the smart) and Donna Fatale (the sexy), time has now come to meet Dino Fagioli. Yes, the stupid. And boy is he ever! But more on that later.

Dino’s chapter doesn’t start outside the prison like Doug and Donna’s, but rather in the office of the prison governor. Since Dino doesn’t have any prior criminal record, the governor wants to give him a second chance and offers to get him a job at the museum.

Saturday, 13 July 2019

In my last post, I managed to get sort of stuck. I imagine I could’ve brute forced my way through, but there’s only so many times one has the patience to try every action on every screen. Luckily commenter Vetinari came to my rescue with some much needed hints on how to proceed.

I only had a couple of items in my possession, but one of them was a saw, and I was pretty hung up on trying to make the saw in this chapter as useful as the wrench in Doug’s. Alas, what was needed was the “bowl” I found outside Doug’s apartment, that was in fact an empty perfume bottle ( or “flacon” ). Well, after filling this up with water from one of the fountains in the park, I can now go to the department store, pass the bottle off as a new one and ask for a refund.

If 1980 was the year of programming for Med Systems with a total of 14 releases advertised in various magazines, 1981 certainly was the year of advertising. Many Med Systems games, among them Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth, got more attention with belated reviews – in fact, Rat‘s Revenge which was released in September 1980 was only reviewed by the 80 Microcomputing Magazine in November 1981. This was all part of a larger focus on the TRS-80 as a gaming platform: Scott Adams’s Adventure International games had taken hold on the Tandy, and “micro games” certainly were a new trend.

While Med Systems released only five games (four of them adventure games) in 1981, they got a lot more media attention than before. The August 1981 issue of the 80 Microcomputing Magazine is especially noteworthy, as it contains a feature about micro games which quotes William Denman as well as an interview-based article about Frank Corr. Furthermore, the company name pops up in a few more general articles, and their 3-D adventures had apparently become a brand of their own. In the October 1981 issue of the same magazine, Med Systems was able to afford three full-page ads back to back which is quite an investment. The prices are probably not comparable with, say, late 1990’s game magazines, but still this makes Med Systems one of their major customers.

I’ll go into more detail about all of this once we reach the 1981 summary of this marathon but today I’d like to talk about Asylum. Now this is not only the most famous Med Systems game by far but also one with a very confusing backstory. When I started this marathon I thought that this was the game that had piqued my interest as I used to play an adventure game called Asylum on the Commodore 64. However, that was its sequel Asylum II (1982) which was renamed as Asylum for all subsequent 1983 (Atari) and 1986 (Commodore, DOS) releases. The 1981 Asylum is entirely new to me, and I’m looking forward to playing it quite a bit.

Asylum is another maze game but with more adventure elements than the previous ones. It is also the third part of the so-called “Continuum Series” but that brand name apparently only came up in late 1981. In Mike Nadeau’s aforementioned article about Frank Corr (titled “Frank Corr – Making the Ultimate Maze”), Corr suggests that in Asylum everything was “twice as good as Deathmaze”. He attributes that to a new routine they used to store graphics as data. Asylum is also supposed to be a lot easier than Deathmaze which suggests that there are possibly not so many arbitrary puzzles in it. I’d like that! The game was co-written by Corr and Denman and released in February 1981. Its vast success apparently led to a sequel, programmed by Denman only. This is also the last we’ll hear of Frank Corr although it seems that he had great plans for his next game which was supposed to be set inside a space station or a similar setting and use octagonal rooms.

Sunday, 7 July 2019

Who’s the dark knight detective that’s a hit with all the chicks? Batman! Your darned right. Welcome back to Batman Returns! Last week, I completed the first day by discovering (and stealing) an innocuous awards ceremony tape from the mayor’s office. We spent the day exploring and dealing with thugs from a circus gang, but did not spy either Penguin or Catwoman. Thus far, the game feels a bit thin with empty areas and not a lot that to explore thanks to the verbless interface. That said, the graphics are quite good and I’m enjoying bits of Danny Elfman in the soundtrack-- his Batman theme is one of the musical highpoints of my childhood and adds so much to this game.

And yet, you might sense that something is off. As Alex Romanov noted in the comments to my last post, I made a critical mistake that I did not discover until the end of this session. Things didn't go well for the Caped Crusader. Rather than whitewash it, I will narrate what happened and you can see for yourself how I spent the next four hours of play time. I am not sure whether I was completely doomed after the first day’s mistake or if there was some way that I could have recovered, but either way this is a “Lost!” post. I will try again from the start next week.

Tuesday, 2 July 2019

The perceptive reader will know that in my previous post, I finished Doug’s chapter. It ended with him being knocked out by a mysterious stranger as soon as he’d escaped with the Jade Buddha he was assigned to steal from the Saku-Rambo monastery.

This means that it’s time to pick a new character to play. And for the very good reason of “why not?” I picked Donna Fatale, whose most important character trait - as we learned from the intro - is being sexy.

Thursday, 27 June 2019

Na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na Batman! I hope you got your score votes in because it’s time to play Batman Returns. Given how excited Bill Kunkel was to create a Batman game, I am secretly rooting for this one to be better than its reputation, even if he was ultimately dissatisfied with the result. By the time the rating comes, I am certain that I can grade it without bias.

The game opens at twilight on a December night in Gotham City. The skyline is oddly muted; the incandescent bulbs in the towering offices are barely able to pierce the gloom. Danny Elfman’s iconic Batman score rises up through our computer speakers. Suddenly, the Bat-Signal appears in the clouds. Once again, the Gotham City Police has called upon the aid of their secret benefactor-in-the-shadows, Batman. We zoom in to the Batcave where the Caped Crusader is dressed and ready for action. The bat-cursor appears. What should we do first?

Tuesday, 25 June 2019

As far as national anthems go, God Save the Queen is one of the most monotone, dreary and depressing. It is no wonder that a movement, started by the comedian Billy Connely, has long spoken for a jollier and more spirited song, which you could well imagine humming, while walking, in “a genteel abandon of a lifelong teetotaller who has suddenly taken to drink”, through a sunny Borshetshire countryside to the local Flower & Produce Show, pondering whether you should dag the sheep yourself or whether you should hire a professional shearer for a proper crutching. I am speaking, of course, of Barwick Green, the theme tune for The Archers.

Saturday, 22 June 2019

According to issue 017 of “Compute! Magazine” (Oct. 1981), “MED SYSTEMS has been publishing and distributing software worldwide since 1979”. If my research is correct, Med Systems Software started developing and publishing games for the TRS-80 (and subsequently the Commodore PET and the Apple ][) more or less at the same time. In 1980, they not only released Rat’s Revenge, Deathmaze 5000, Labyrinth and Reality Ends but also ten more games and applications. Having reviewed the four available adventure games in previous “Missed Classics” playthroughs, I will dedicate this post to a short rundown of the games that don’t really fit the “Adventure Gamer” template, as Med Systems appears to have been a consistently interesting company.

Multiple attempts to contact William F. “Mike” Denman, jr., who apparently was one of the company’s two lead programmers as well as its president, sadly all but failed. I’ve tried several e-mail addresses and social media platforms, but alas, I never even received a reply. The other main protagonist of the company’s early years was Frank Corr, jr., whom I didn’t even find a trace of online. Most of the early games are still available in some form – several of the manuals can also be found in web archives. Many of the games don’t have in-game credits, so there’s basically no telling who wrote the games without surviving manuals. Sadly, three of the adventure games released in 1980 (or even before?) appear to be lost altogether, but more on that below.

Tuesday, 18 June 2019

I grew up loving comic books. My parents wouldn’t let me buy them, but I still had a tiny little suitcase of issues that I had managed to snag at flea markets with my own money. Looking back on it now, it’s adorable just how much I loved the idea of comics even as I barely owned any and didn’t even understand the difference between Marvel and DC. My big break came in high school when I bought boxes and boxes of them off of one of my mother’s boyfriends, no doubt getting a huge discount as he both tried to look mature enough to date my mother while also trying to be nice to me. Contained within the boxes-- most of which still sit in my basement twenty-five years later-- were a treasure trove of 70s and 80s heroes, especially Doctor Strange and a nearly-complete run of the original Defenders. Even more important than the books were the times that he and I spent together; I grilled him for hours about the histories of major characters and he was always kind enough to humor me. He even took me to my first comic book store. I kept in touch with him long after he and my mother split up. He was an adult geek, the first I had ever known, and that was amazing.

One of the characters that he helped me to love was Batman. I remember how shocked I was to learn that the Robin I knew from TV reruns wasn’t even Robin anymore and that there had been two more since then. In large part because of his collection, I was more a Marvel kid than a DC one, but Batman and his rotating team of whiz-kids was someone I could get into. Bruce Timm and his series sealed the deal and I’ve been a Bat-fan ever sense. Twenty-five years later, I am excited to look at Subway Software & Spirit of Discovery’s Batman Returns (1992), the first ever adventure game featuring the Dark Knight. As this is also the 80th anniversary of the character, I can’t imagine a more fitting time to delve into the history of Batman and Batman-related games, before plunging into our topic at hand. It’s a huge story, but I’ll be brief.

Friday, 14 June 2019

My second session of Reality Ends was remarkably uneventful. I tried some new things with all of my items but putting in an hour got me nowhere. Another obstacle was the savegame feature. My TRS-80 emulator sometimes did not recognize my file names (or rather tape names) but didn’t tell me about it until I tried to restore my saved states. I decided to rough it in order to get the original feeling but that was really time-consuming as every wrong move (and there are many of them) led me back to the beginning. In the end, I didn’t even need my notes to get the food, feed the dog, get the umbrella, get the diamonds after using the umbrella, get the horse, jump across the ravine, get the mail, get the rope, throw the rope, climb the rope, get the plants, pay for the polish with the plants, buy guns and finally pay for them with the diamonds. In the end, I only achieved a couple new things: I was able to pick up the gold and recruit the marksmen in the town of Rayor. When I tried to attack the town of Margon now, I was still crushed. The VOCAB command soon became my best friend. I spent a lot of time dabbling with the “place” command (especially “place marksmen” which seemed like a martial thing to do) before figuring out that it’s just a synonym for “drop”. Dropping the marksmen caused them to disappear into thin air, however, although I was able to recruit them indefinitely as long as I had the gold. Using items, even for payment, doesn’t make you drop them or lose them which seems a bit counterintuitive – it makes things a lot easier, though. Oh, and I rolled the log, revealing a metal box. Its top is welded shut, though, so that just turned into another puzzle.

Without a clue what to do next I checked out my trusty 1981 Med Systems catalog once again. The description of Reality Ends came with three sort-of clues and one major disappointment: Apparently, it was marketed as a game for beginners. Also, the “clues” were not clues per se but rather bits and pieces hinting at the plot. They only confirmed my suspicions that I had to attack the city of Margon to free the Amulet of Sangi and recruit the fanatic hordes “to aid my quest”.

Tuesday, 11 June 2019

It seems like only two days ago that we started our look at Borrowed Time, the first game by Subway Software and a fun diversion as I prepare for Batman Returns. This is the first adventure game created by “The Game Doctor”, William Kunkel, during a brief period where he transitioned from game journalist to game designer. We left off last week after an extended chase sequence as my character, the hardboiled detective Sam Hawlow, survived an attempt on his life.

The plot thickens right away. As soon as I step out of the bar where I had fled, my assistant Iris finds me. Someone has kidnapped my ex-wife Rita; Iris recommends that I search Rita’s apartment for clues. I learned a few minutes earlier that Rita was on good terms with one of the thugs, Fred Mongo, so I do not understand why she was kidnapped. Was she double-crossed? Is this a setup intended to lure me to my death? Was she so upset about the unpaid alimony that she would seek out the mob, only to end up in over her head? I’ll have to play some more to find out. Although my character should know where her apartment is located, I will need to explore the city to find it. Let’s see what we see!

Sunday, 9 June 2019

If you are like me, sometimes research takes you places that you don’t expect. When I started into Batman Returns, I expected to find that it was a half-assed game produced by a no-name little software outlet who won the minimum bid to make the ninth licensed game based on the 1992 movie. And, it might still be that. I haven’t even looked at the game yet as I wait for a copy of the manual to arrive by mail. (I’ll be donating it to the Internet Archive once I wrap up my review.) Instead, I discovered the story of Subway Software and one of it founders, Bill Kunkel.

Rather than jump straight into Batman, I’d like to tell Mr. Kunkel’s story through a different game: an illustrated text adventure called Borrowed Time, Subway Software’s first release. As so many of these games were, it was a multi-party affair: developed by Interplay using their adventure game engine, based on a story and design by Kunkel’s company, and published by Activision. This was still around four months before Activision bought Infocom so it is not quite a cousin to the games that we have looked at in the Zork marathon, but it is a sign that they were interested in the interactive fiction genre. Borrowed Time has kidnapping, murder, and at least one HIPAA violation. It was also pretty fun to play to whet my appetite for Batman. Let’s get to it.

Wednesday, 5 June 2019

The name’s Nuts, Doug Nuts. I’m an electronics genius with a mission. And that mission is… what was it again? Oh yeah, to steal a jade Buddha from a safe in the “Saku-Rambo” Monastery. Only problem is, I have no idea where to find the monastery.

It’s time to check out the rest of the great city of Tyoko! Or Tioko! Frankly it’s getting a bit silly that the game can’t decide on a spelling for the name of the city, so going forward I plan on doing a count of all the city name references I find, to see which one is used most frequently, and will thus be the official name. Check the summary at the bottom to see if your favourite comes out on top. But now, let’s start exploring! And by exploring I mean wandering around aimlessly, clicking stuff until something useful happens.

The city center consists of a number of screens. The exits aren’t always logical or easy to spot, so I hope I’ve found them all. Due north from Honest Chan’s, however, I find this busy street.

Saturday, 1 June 2019

A general rule seems to be that the more work you put into thorough research, the more work you create for yourself as a result. Does that make sense? Well, I had ambitiously planned to write a short connecting blog post to describe the non-adventure games Med Systems Software released between Labyrinth and Asylum but as a result I found out that there are many more, almost undocumented adventure games by the company I hadn't even heard about. Med Systems appears to have been as prolific as, say, Sirius Software, and not much less innovative, either. Today's post deals with the first of the overlooked adventure games that came out in 1980 – the same year as Deathmaze 5000 and Labyrinth so who knows which one came first? – and some of the non-adventure games that probably fall into the period between the second and the third "Continuum" adventure games Labyrinth and Asylum. The game in question is called Reality Ends and there is not much information about it to be found on the internet. Actually, Jason Dyer just played it on his blog “Renga in Blue” but I have kept myself from reading his posts because I want to avoid spoilers.

Reality Ends is yet another TRS-80 game but it uses a different premise, a different engine and a different approach to adventure gaming than the 3D maze/adventure crossover games I've previously been writing about. The introductory screen looks familiar because of a sort of corporate identity thing they seem to have been going on but the story is really unique. I can honestly say that I know of no other adventure game or even computer game to have a similar idea at its core. It "places you in a reality composed of over 200 parallel universes. You must move from universe to universe seeking the necessary materials to destroy Baldir." You have 400 moves to accomplish that or "reality dissolves". Sound weird? Well, the game isn't. The "universes" are actually clever metaphors for the rooms. Each room has a different description and the grid consists of 18 by 12 (216) "universes". The descriptions are just a little bit different, though, stressing the idea of hopping between parallel universes instead of just moving through adherent spaces.

Thursday, 30 May 2019

We are nearing the end of the year 1992, so it’s time to continue some traditions. When we reached the final games of 1991, our readers had a chance to choose the best of the Missed Classics we had completed thus far. Now, it’s time to choose the best of the Missed Classics completed after the previous poll. Just like last time, we’ll continue with a quick rundown of the candidates.

The poll of 1991 was won by Cinemaware’s It Came From The Desert. Since then, we’ve covered its sequel, Antheads: It Came From The Desert II. Will Cinemaware be able to win twice in a row?

Tuesday, 28 May 2019

In my previous post, we took a gander at the manual and discussed the history of the developers, but not much was said about the game itself, so let’s get cracking (literally) on that.

I start off as Doug Nuts. (So no quiz-based character selection as of yet.) He’s underground in what looks like a sewer and has seemingly huffed and puffed his way through a brick wall and is now facing something that looks suspiciously like a bank vault.

Sunday, 26 May 2019

From 1980 to 1986, Infocom charmed the gaming world with their text adventures. I’ve just defeated Ballyhoo, their 19th and final independently-released game. It’s a moment that I want to savor, even as we have a whole bunch more games to go before we get to Return to Zork. It seems crazy to me that I’ve been writing about Infocom games for nearly three years and I’ve just now reached this point. Ballyhoo has been a nice surprise to end this first leg of the Infocom saga on: a game that is far from perfect, but more than I might have expected given its reputation.

We ended last week with the realization that half the circus crew was involved in the kidnapping. We have connected the ransom note to one or more of the clowns (although which ones are less certain), we know that Rimshaw hypnotized someone with the headphones, and we know that Andrew and the new lion tamer are also involved. That’s a decent chunk of the circus crew, but I have no idea what they hope to get out of the deal. It doesn’t all add up yet, but it might make more sense if I get my hands on the ransom note.

I had to look up more hints than I would have liked to close out this game. If I had more time, I would have done a “Request for Assistance” but I’m writing this now as we’re just about to post final ratings for Rome and Enchantia. The clock is ticking for me to play Batman Returns so I hope you will excuse the desire to get to the end. You’ll see the reasons why I needed hints in a moment, but overall I found that the game doesn’t quite hold together as well in its final puzzles. I’m eager for your opinions, even if you think I just dropped the ball.

Friday, 24 May 2019

Oh this is going to be a good one. Like I said in the first post, I’ve already tried playing Enchantia a very long time ago but never really got past the underwater section. Now that I’ve been forced to do so, I discovered what can only be described as a masterpiece in bad game design. Let’s see how it fares in the PISSED system. Spoiler alert: it probably won’t go very high.

Tuesday, 21 May 2019

In a rare case for The Adventure Gamer, this game was actually played by two of us. Reiko introduced us to the game and started it, making the first gameplay post, and then I took over when Reiko was unable to complete it. As Reiko was fairly early in the game, I started it anew, quickly playing through the first chapter in order to catch up.

And as I played the game, it grew on me… grew on me like a malignant tumour. I started off finding it acceptably average, but it quickly became tedious as each chapter devolved into a game of trial-and-error, and sometimes the worst form of trial-and-error, where the randomisation had me continually try the same thing over and over until luck fell my way.

Doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results is a definition of Rome: Pathway to Power - Albert Einstein

Friday, 17 May 2019

That’s it! I conquered Curse of Enchantia! I slayed the beast! Victory! Free at last!

I have mixed feelings about it. One part of me is very proud to have done this without a walkthrough (even if the temptation was very strong a few times) and the other part is astonished by the vacuity of the whole thing. I think my soul has died a little by playing this game to completion. Good thing it was for the blog, if it helps at least one person to stay away from this game in the future, maybe my sacrifice wasn’t for nothing.

But for now, let’s all go back in the enchanted land of Enchantia one last time in order to help Brad get rid of the evil sorceress once and for all! Yay!

Wednesday, 15 May 2019

Welcome back! Last time out, we started into Infocom’s fourth mystery game, Ballyhoo. Unlike our previous mysteries, this one is not (yet!) a murder. Instead, we have a kidnapping… at a circus! We will have to use all of our investigative skills to find out who kidnapped the owner’s daughter and why, even though the owner doesn’t know we are helping and probably wouldn’t be that thrilled to find out that some random patron was snooping around his circus after closing time. Why are we doing this again? Because we secretly dream of the Big Top ourselves! And of being a detective, apparently. Actually, I have no idea why we’re doing this but someone has to save the girl and so it might as well be us.

I apologize for the small delay in getting this out. We’ve had “plague house” here at the local Infocom Marathon Headquarters and so much of my time has been spent either being sick, cleaning up after others being sick, or both at the same time. It doesn’t make for the best head-space for writing about a fun-filled circus holiday. To compensate, I’ve made this entry a bit longer than usual. As they say, send in the clowns!

Monday, 13 May 2019

Two years after my first ever playthrough for The Adventure Gamer, I’m finally up for another. Quite the gap, but - surprise! - we’re still doing games from 1992! We sure are taking our time here, or perhaps 1992 was just a particularly bountiful year. Either way, the next game up is Nippon Safes, Inc. This game was developed by Dynabyte software, an Italian game creator. I couldn’t find a lot of information about this company, but running a couple of Italian wikis through Google translate helped a little.

Dynabyte. I’m gonna go out on a limb and guess that it’s a portmanteau of dynamite and byte

Tuesday, 7 May 2019

Hector’s Journal #4:"The Emperor considers me a threat to his power. I'll show him a threat. I'll curry Cleopatra's favour and see if she can help me oust the Emperor. I'm sure I'd be at least as good an Emperor - I can eat grapes and raise taxes all day with the best of them... and I rarely argue with shrubbery..."

When last we looked in on Hector the slave owner, invader, pillager, briber and attempted assassin-hirer, he'd just been made a Consul and sent to Egypt to protect Cleopatra.

It seems Cleopatra's throne is being threatened by her brother, Ptolemy XXIV. Now, I looked up Ptolemy XXIV and couldn't find him, but Google pointed me to the Wikipedia page of Ptolemy VIII instead.

I'm sure if I look up all royal families in history I'll find something weirder than this, but when your niece, stepdaughter and wife are all the same person perhaps it's time to stop trying to pick up women at family reunions.

Friday, 3 May 2019

Just when I thought this game couldn’t get any weirder, it throws you a curveball and creates the most mindf..king world I’ve seen in a long time. Let’s just say this part of the game would make the island of fairy tales in King’s Quest VI look like a perfectly normal office bullpen. But first things first, I had to reach the next part, which is easier said than done when you’re back in the same town area without any change and no idea on how to progress in the game…

Wednesday, 1 May 2019

Infocom careened into 1986 on the backs of two contradictory pieces of information. Sales had been up in 1985 for an all-time high of $11.5 million, and yet the company was falling apart. The Cornerstone flop was a distant memory, but the winter layoffs that followed were not. Marc Blank, founder and co-developer of the Zork series, Deadline, and Enchanter was out. So was Al Vezza, the CEO. Mike Berlyn had left even before Fooblitzky had been released with the graphics team as one of the layoff casualties. Infocom was in active negotiations with Activision for a buyout, although how much of this was known during the development of Ballyhoo is unclear. What is clear is that the announcement of Activision’s intent to merge came out within days of Ballyhoo’s release. This would be the last game ever released by an independent Infocom.

Into this maelstrom entered Jeff O’Neill, a first time Implementor. Originally from California, he came to Infocom with a background in journalism and a smidge of computer science. He put those skills to use doing QA on Wishbringer, Hitchhiker’s Guide, and likely other games. He also subbed in as a writer for the The New Zork Times, the company newsletter. Unlike many of the other Imps, Jeff has kept his privacy post-Infocom and so we know less about him than other team members. We’ll see his touch here and in Nord and Bert (1987), plus he was one of the contributors to Bureaucracy (also 1987). I look forward to getting to know him through his games.

Saturday, 27 April 2019

Hector’s Journal #3:"I've been a Senator for 15 minutes and I've already been given the opportunity to become a Consul, a position of power second only to the Emperor himself. So how do I get the populace to vote for me? Sensible and affordable policies? Tax breaks for low income families? Screw all that. I figure the most effective way of getting this promotion is by bribing as many citizens as I can! It's times like these I'm wondering if I should have spent more time earlier in the game stealing money..."

I hate Rome! Each chapter of the game has involved me restarting it over and over again until I get it right. And these sections have gotten progressively harder. To top it all off, while each section is a self-contained level, the amount of gold I have is carried over, so when I've only just passed an earlier section with minimal extra funds, I make each subsequent section harder. Can I make it too hard to finish? I certainly hope not. I actually enjoy the repetition the first few times I have to restart, as I see different things, but after a few goes I see nothing new and just have to plod through hoping the luck of the dice turn my way. I thought the reloading of saved games was tedious in the previous chapter, but this chapter leaves Britain for dead in the 'you failed - start again' stakes. Sigh. Oh well, Let's continue playing and see how I go.

When last we looked in on Hector the slave owner, invader and pillager, he'd just been made a Senator by leading an army into killing a lot of Britons. Being a responsible slave owner, I enquire about Barbarus' health.

Good, because I'll probably be having you fight until you die at the arena later today.

What's Your Story?

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Send your answers to adventuregamer@googlegroups.com for 20 Companion Assist points. The answers will be made into blog posts, so try to be a bit more verbose with them.